If post a response to someone, and someone replies to me, and they get a single silent downvote prior to me reading their response, I find myself reflexively upvoting them just so they won’t think I was the one who did the single silent downvote, since it seems plausible to me that if you have a single downvote, and no responses, the most likely explanation to me was that it was from the person who you replied to downvoted you, and I don’t want people to think that.
Except, then I seem to have gotten my opinion of the post hopelessly biased before even reading it, because I’d feel bad if I revoked the upvote, let alone actually downvoted them, and I feel like I can’t get back to the status quo of them just having a 0 point or positive post.
It also doesn’t seem like it would have the same effect if someone replied to me and was heavily downvoted, but I don’t actually recall that happening.
If I try to assess this more rationally, I get the suggestion ’You’re worrying far too much about what other people MIGHT be thinking, based on flimsy evidence.”
If I try to assess this more rationally, I get the suggestion ’You’re worrying far too much about what other people MIGHT be thinking, based on flimsy evidence.”
If I try to assess this more rationally, I get the suggestion ’You’re worrying far too much about what other people MIGHT be thinking, based on flimsy evidence.”
Thoughts?
I think the thought you thought of there is right.
If post a response to someone, and someone replies to me, and they get a single silent downvote prior to me reading their response, I find myself reflexively upvoting them just so they won’t think I was the one who did the single silent downvote, since it seems plausible to me that if you have a single downvote, and no responses, the most likely explanation to me was that it was from the person who you replied to downvoted you, and I don’t want people to think that.
Except, then I seem to have gotten my opinion of the post hopelessly biased before even reading it, because I’d feel bad if I revoked the upvote, let alone actually downvoted them, and I feel like I can’t get back to the status quo of them just having a 0 point or positive post.
It also doesn’t seem like it would have the same effect if someone replied to me and was heavily downvoted, but I don’t actually recall that happening.
If I try to assess this more rationally, I get the suggestion ’You’re worrying far too much about what other people MIGHT be thinking, based on flimsy evidence.”
Thoughts?
The suggestion is correct.
It’s easy for users to abandon that supposition by themselves after they have spent enough time at LW.
You don’t need to upvote them necessarily. Just flip a coin.
If you downvote them too, then it just looks like they made a bad post.
I upvote people who reply to me on unpopular threads disproportionately often, because I want to encourage that.
I upvote people who I think have an unfairly low score.
Given this, behaviour much like yours follows. I think that’s fine.
I’d recommend always reading before voting though.
I think the thought you thought of there is right.
If you want to make it clear that you didn’t downvote just start your post with (I didn’t downvote the above post)